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Sunday, 4 November 2012

Portraying Bigotry

One
of the thorniest issues when it comes to analysing media from a social
justice perspective is the concept of portraying prejudice and bigotry.
After all, bigotry exists, bigoted people exist, at some point we’ll
expect some bigoted characters showing up. And
that’s not a bad thing - in fact, erasing prejudice and pretending it
doesn’t exist is far from ideal. To not show prejudice in times and
places where prejudiced would be common or rife can be a denial that
that prejudice exists, especially if you are showing everyone in that
area and era as gloriously accepting of all minorities. In many ways
it’s a form of erasure to do this or a rewriting of the world - both
present historic. The problem is portraying prejudice in a way that
doesn’t perpetuate it - and too often writers use this argument of
“realistic portrayal” as an excuse to produce some severely bigoted
work.So how to portray bigotry without producing a book or show that should come with its own trigger warning or will make the minority in question want to eat your liver?Firstly,
and perhaps most importantly, is that prejudiced portrayal really
necessary? Sometimes the presence of bigotry is not only unnecessary,
but it’s down right confusing, especially in speculative fiction. In an
alternate world with an entirely different religion, culture even
different species, is there a reason why women are dealing with
misogyny? So much else had changed, why not this? Or, in the distant
future, between the stars with more curiously-humanoid-aliens than you
could shake a phaser at, do we still need racism? This can reach the
point of almost parody - I’ve seen avatars of Greek gods - ancient Greek
gods - losing their shit over men kissing. The Greeks!It’s
bemusing that, in these worlds where everything can be so different
from our own, prejudice is considered inviolate. When all else in
history can be changed, when the truly fantastic can be introduced, when
we have magic, vampires, aliens and plot holes you can drive a bus
through, it seems ridiculous to decide that bigotry is just something
that must remain. And I think every social justice media critic in the
world is tired of someone explaining the absolute necessity of
“historical accuracy” in a series that has freaking dragons.But
even aside from fantasy worlds where you’ve decided to, bewilderingly,
include real world bigotry; there is plenty of bigotry shown in works
that are closer to our world and we have to ask “why is this necessary?”
Does this prejudice actually add anything to the story or development
or anything at all? One of the things that annoyed us so much about
season 1 of American Horror Story is the amount of bigotry that was
presented was completely gratuitous - it did nothing for the story to
have the realtor use gay slurs to describe the previous occupants of the
house, or even half of the many other problematic incidents on the
show. Throwing in bigotry for the sheer hell of it, to an extent where
it seems almost out of place sometimes, doesn’t help anyone.Ok,
you’ve looked at the bigotry and it is an absolute essential part of
setting the world, the characters and the story. It would be wrong to
exclude it - so how to include it without supporting it? Simple - by
making it unsupportable